New Study: tobacco companies spiked cigarettes with diet aids to hook people worried about weight

Editor
May 4, 2011

It's been nearly a century since Lucky Strike first used the slogan "Reach for A Lucky Instead of A Sweet" and decades since the early Virginia Slims advertising campaign depicted women who smoke as independent, stylish, sexy — and of course slim — to market to women and girls.

But slogans and sophisticated images weren't the only tricks in the tobacco industry's scheme to keep people smoking.

According to a new study published in The European Journal of Public Health, the companies added appetite suppressants to cigarettes "to enhance the effects of smoking on appetite and body weight" — and to stoke smokers' fears of gaining weight if they quit.

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